Tuesday, March 11, 2014

A Sign of Life

It's been quite a while since my last blog post. The reason is that I was sort of suffering from a blogger burn out. It had become quite difficult to keep up with my reading and review obligations. At first it was mostly because of an increase of other activities in my personal life: I not only work full time but I also decided last year to go back to school. I’m studying Communication and Multimedia Design, and it’s been putting quite a strain on my spare time, as you can imagine. While I didn’t want my social life to suffer too much from all that, there was nearly no time left to read and write reviews.
On top of that I had to come to terms with the loss of a dear person whom I admired. The mourning process spiraled me down into some serious doubts about my life and my choices. It was a tough period in which existential questions dominated my mood pretty much all the time. The only reason that I still kept reading was to escape from the pain and the self-research. I’m thankful for the books that had the ability to make me forget for a short period. But writing reviews just wasn’t going too well.
I’m doing much better now. Doing fun stuff with friends and having good conversations with a few others and my husband helped me to get my head sorted. I’m done with being depressed; it’s time for smiles again. Last week hubs and I went to Lisbon, the sunny capitol of Portugal, and now I’m ready for the spring to begin.

As for blogging: I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who dealt with some variation of blogger burn out. Quite some blogs and websites I used to visit did throw in the towel and either went on a hiatus or did quit all together (like Brief Encounters, Booklovers Inc and Jessewave) and others don’t blog as frequently as they used to do anymore. It’s sad, but understandable. And it’s not a new phenomenon either; it has been like this ever since I started blogging back in 2009. I’ve seen many bloggers throw in the towel over the years.
I also noticed that I’m not the only one who doesn’t read exclusively M/M novels anymore, I see quite some (Goodreads) friends mixing M/M with M/F romance or other genres now too. The M/M genre couldn’t hold my attention as it used to anymore. I still read M/M books but only the ones that really pique my interest or that are written by my favorite authors.
I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this blog yet; I don’t want to go back to the weekly reviews, but I do miss blogging. I just don’t want the full email inbox that comes with the review activity returning. And I don’t want the review copies piling up again. So for now, I keep reading the books that I buy and when I feel like it I might write about one or two on the blog, without the pressure that comes with accepting review copies. I’m not sure if this will work for me, I’m probably too lazy without the obligation to write about a book, but we’ll see.

To conclude this post with something more bookish, here are a few books that I look forward to reading:

10 comments:

My own blog has suffered. Real life has a way of interfering with our real life. Blah. But as you said, it's the way it goes, blogs come and go. Glad you are feeling better and that you had a lovely vacation. We are expecting 8-10cm of snow tomorrow. *whimper* No more, no more. But it's my last winter for awhile, maybe I should enjoy it. Eh. No.

Hi Tam, it is the cycle of life, I guess, things/people/blogs come and go. ;) Wow, 8-10 cm of snow! I don't envy you. We haven't had any snow yet this winter, it's quite uncommon really. How is it your last winter for awhile? Are you moving to warmer places?

I'm with you both. I've been struggling since the beginning of the year. Some things changed in my life (the bf and I broke up) and I threw myself into training for some running and triathlon races this year. So I understand the depression and pulling away. I'm glad to see you're on the upside and feeling better.

I'm not feeling like m/m right now. I haven't for 3 months, if not longer. I'm not sure why because I'm reading, I just never want to reach for the m/m right now. My blog is so dusty that I just ignore it because I feel -horrible- about it.

I'm so sorry to hear about your break up with your bf! That kind of thing always sucks. (((hugs))) I hope the running and triathlon races will pull you through the difficult times!The not feeling like m/m appears to be contagious. I know how you feel about the dusty blog, mine is even dustier than yours, so you can imagine how horrible I feel. But that seems to be contagious as well as I see more bloggers ignoring theirs (more or less). ;-)

I'm still reading MM, but I read more YA and YA LGBT these says. I guess I'm feeling a bit burnt out on MM lately. BUT Ball & Chain!! I had to pick that one up, because Zane&Ty!! <333 4ever :P And I'm also a fan of the Cole McGinnis series so I'll definitely be reading that one too.

Hi honey! It's good to hear from you again. I'm sorry to hear that you were going through a tough time but am happy to hear you're doing better. Here's your cyber hug {{hug}}. Whatever the blog will be...it will be and we'll all just be happy to hear what you have to say. :)Thanks for the heads up on these books - there are a couple I hadn't heard about yet.

Hi Tracy! Thank you for the cyber hugs and for stopping by. :) You're so sweet to say that about my blog. ((hugs))And you're welcome for the book tips. Always happy to help others with spending money on books. ;-)

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The books we review at Rarely Dusty Books are provided by publishers, authors and their representatives most of the time, however some are purchased by the individual reviewers as well.Whether we receive the books from one of the above mentioned or buy them ourselves, has no influence on the outcome of our reviews.